tenderly with paradisiac food—that delicious
phosphorescent fungus which Kitchi-Manitou so
kindly gives his Indian children in their Indian
heaven. For their heaven is exclusively Indian;
but universally so. All enemies on earth become
friends in heaven; and Sioux, Blackfeet, Crows,
Apaches, Ojibbeways, and Iroquois meet and
mingle there in blissful oblivion of the wrongs
which made them go to war so fiercely when
down below, and account the raising of each
other's scalps the first duty of life and its
greatest pleasure. They do not hunt, either,
in heaven; hunting ranks with war and
work, and the only activities of Paradise are
dancing, singing, playing at games, and eating.
We can quite understand how these should
seem to be the very essence of beatified life to
the poor, toiling, warring, half-starved, unpeaceful
Indian brave. And yet they are almost
always cheerful, in spite of their precarious and
painful life. In travelling, when the Canadians
"give out," and sink under the privations and
difficulties of their way, the Indians sing, laugh,
are cool, brave, and collected. Without much
demonstration and with no outspoken enthusiasm
(they despise any great show of feeling,
whatever it may be), they are wonderfully
inspirited and inspiriting, and shame even the
bravest of the Europeans by their own superior
fortitude and courage. Only in the presence of
his superstitions is an Indian a coward, and
then he is a child, an infant, whom the very
name of "bogie" terrifies into stupidity.
Sometimes, the brave comes back from heaven;
and stories were told to Mr. Kohl of how such
and such a one had been up the Path of the
Dead, had seen the Great Strawberry, and
passed over the awful bridge, and had then come
back to earth to live out his unfinished life.
And they have ghosts, too—real ghosts—wherein
they are unlike that great romance magazine of
the East, the Arabian Nights, where no such
hint of immortality is given. But then the
Indians believe in what we might almost call
the "resurrection of the body." If their "doll
of sorrow," and the return of a defunct brave,
do not mean the actual translation of the living
body into heaven, what else do they mean?

Games of manly prowess charm the Indians
as much as they charmed the ancient Greeks;
and a man who excels in these is held in as high
honour as was the conqueror at the Olympic
games, or the victor of the Elian. A swift
runner and a first-rate ball-player stand in the
same rank with a renowned warrior or a
successful hunter; and that a man should be these
is absolutely necessary if he would eat and
drink and know how to defend himself from
injury. And besides games of skill, games of
chance are also dear to the red man's soul. In
fact, the red man is a born gambler, and stakes
as largely and as fiercely as the most passionate
professor of roulette and vingt-et-un ever met
with at the Baden Conversations Haus. Mr.
Kohl nearly got himself into trouble by speaking
to a handsome young fellow gambling at pages
san; the game of carved plum-stones (pages-
sanag) shaken upright in a bowl. The young
man turned round and made such an angry
speech that the interpreter declined the
equivocal task of translating it, but took his revenge
instead, in a good round dozen of abuse of the
Indian. All that Mr. Kohl could understand
was, "that an Indian must not be spoken to
while gambling." Like the Greeks in some of
their games, the Indians are also like them in
the exceeding sincerity and universal application
of their religious faith. Nothing is done without
a trace of religion in it. Their smoking
parties, their meals, their games, expeditions,
hunting-parties, wars,—everything has its own
particular religious forms and ceremonies mixed
up with it, even to the "grace before meat,"
usually held as especially and peculiarly Christian;
and, like all savage people, everything is
symbolic. The very paint on the face has its
different meanings, from the fiery red of the
war paint to the "mitigated grief" of the half-
mourning pattern of trellis-work, or divided
features. Sometimes half the face only will be
black for mourning, and the other painted in
various hues; and sometimes only a rambling
diapering of lines will be drawn, with parti-
coloured spaces in between, to show a more
distant loss, or a less severe affliction than the
face covered in black from brow to chin would
have expressed. Blue is the colour of peace,
and blue is the colour of the sky painted on
their graves; but many Indians cannot distinguish
blue from green. It is quite a national
trait of colour-blindness among them.
Sometimes they paint the sun on their graves black—
they put heaven itself in mourning for the loved
and lost; and sometimes they are astronomical,
and depict the various phases of the moon, &c.,
on the living canvas stretched between the scalp
and chin. The dandies often change their paint.
Mr. Kohl knew a set, or clique, who altered the
pattern and colour of their faces every day, just
as our exquisites would change their waistcoats,
or their neckties. But the war paint is the
most terrible: fiery red, colour of blood, and all
sorts of fierce things. Oh! they are ugly sights,
these fellows, in their war bravery, with tags and
tails flying, and their great red faces shining
like copper-coloured suns out from the midst of
dun-coloured clouds!

When they go on a warlike expedition they
use many strange measures and precautions. A
"sacrifice squaw," a maiden all in white, leads
the way; they take very little baggage with
them, and, because fasting is a religious war-
exercise, fast much along the road; they never
sit down under the shade of a tree while on the
way, nor scratch their heads with their fingers
—though the renowned warriors are allowed the
luxury of scratching themselves with a piece of
wood or comb; "the young men who go on
the war trail for the first time" wear, like the
women, a species of cap or cloth on the head,
walk with drooping brows, speak very little, if
at all, and are not allowed to join in the dead or
war songs. Also, they must not suck the
marrow from the bones of their food, and they